Postcrossing: Making your Mail Fun Again!

Anyone who's ever experienced the heartwarming highs and aching lows of the Summer Camp Mail Call knows the feeling. Waiting eagerly as one name after another is called out, breath held in the hopes that the next missive might be meant for your eyes only. Even when you knew precisely what to expect, a weekly postcard from a parent or a letter promised by a friend, the thrill of its arrival was still singular. There were no bills or coupon booklets, no appeals for donations and no false promises of million-dollar windfalls. Just lovingly handwritten correspondence, the stamp licked and placed carefully so, ferried in safety of the mailman's satchel through sleet, snow, and dark of night, only to arrive at last in your hands. Pretty special stuff.

Nowadays, most correspondence is handled instantly and effortlessly, and the few parcels of note that do arrive in the post are invariably embossed with the seals of internet stalwarts like Netflix or Amazon. It's a bittersweet compromise. Our ability to connect online becomes exponentially easier, but the actual act of connecting becomes ever less meaningful. By creating an online hub to facilitate the thoughtful exchange of ink-and-paper objects, the online postcard sharing community Postcrossing has struck an elegant balance between the convenience and efficacy of the World Wide Web with the tactile satisfaction and trip-to-the-mailbox exertion of the World Wide World: a place of texture and odor and heft and refrigerator magnets.

It's pretty simple, really. When you first sign up as a member, you're given an address to which you send a postcard. Once it arrives, your address is then given to another one of the 170,000+ members in 209 countries who sends you a postcard from their particular far-off locale. And that's it. You keep sending them off into the world, and they keep showing up in the mail. It's armchair traveling, but with souvenirs to show for it. It's a tiny way to brighten your day, from a stranger a world away.